


Trinity

by Anonymous



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Anxiety, Bodily Fluids, Body Horror, Cis Elias Bouchard, Codependency, Cunnilingus, Dark, Dark Porn, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub Undertones, Drugged Sex, Existential Angst, Eye Licking, Face-Fucking, Fellatio, Forced Pregnancy, Horror, Hurt/Unhealthy Comfort, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kidnapping, M/M, Personality Disorder, Possessive Behavior, Praise Kink, Rape, Self-Destruction, Selfcest, Stockholm Syndrome, Tentacle Rape, Trans Jonah Magnus, Transphobia, Trypophobia, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Verbal Humiliation, past assault, this fic got me added to an anti's list on tumblr of people they should be allowed to hunt for sport
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:14:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27666638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: After Gertrude's death, Elias encountered a means of time travel.  Instead of promoting another ungrateful failure as head archivist, he decides tomakea perfect Archivist of his own, and a perfect family to join in his rule.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Jonah Magnus, Jonah Magnus/Maxwell Rayner
Comments: 75
Kudos: 87
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags, and they will change.
> 
>  **The ship is NOT Jonah Magnus x original Elias Bouchard. _It is selfcest of Jonah Magnus x Jonah Magnus in Elias Bouchard's body._ You have been warned.** It is dark!
> 
> Thank you, Discord, for enabling me.

Jonah stood between a column and a grand fireplace, facing the interior balcony that provided a view looking down on the ballroom. He tipped back his glass of madeira, peering over the rim to eye up the other party guests participating in the final dance of the night.

He was not a great fan of dancing and avoided it when he could do so without offending his host, but he did like to watch.

Right now, however, Jonah had the uncanny sense that someone was watching him.

Jonah’s gaze trailed up the warmly lit mint-colored walls to the balcony before him. A man stood there now, one he was positive had not been there moments before. The man pressed into the gold railing, arms spread and fingers curled around it. When he caught Jonah looking back, Jonah discovered he could not look away.

There was something off in the man’s dress, Jonah thought, although he could not place a finger on what it was. There was nothing overtly unusual about the ensemble of black breeches and steel-grey tailcoat over an ivory waistcoat, but something about the cut or the fabric appeared foreign somehow.

Barnabas Bennett joined by his side, fresh off a dance and beaming from a combination of physical exertion, drink, and the mere sight of Jonah. Jonah smiled fondly, reaching behind Barnabas to discreetly run a sharp nail along the small of his back. Barnabas shivered, delightfully easy to fluster as always.

“Such a pretty dancer,” Jonah said indulgently. Barnabas’s eyes shone from the trickle of praise. “It is always a joy to see it.”

“It is always a joy when you see me,” Barnabas volleyed back. “I swear I can feel your eyes on me at times.”

“I’m sure you can,” Jonah replied cheekily, smirking into his drink before tossing the rest of it back. Jonah lifted his head to seek the balcony once more, only for it to be vacant. “Tell me,” Jonah said, making a fluid segue, “who was the gentleman I saw on the balcony during your dance?”

The corner of Barnabas’s mouth tugged in almost a frown, but he recovered immediately. He was genuine to a fault, especially when it came to Jonah. “Truth be told, he caught my attention as well,” Barnabas confessed. He sounded vaguely guilty, even though he owed Jonah nothing, and Jonah was yet again reminded why he was so endeared. “He seemed familiar, did he not?”

“Yes,” said Jonah, scowling at his empty goblet. “Familiar, that’s just the right word for it. How strange.”

“Let me fetch you another drink,” Barnabas offered, reaching for Jonah’s glass.

A grey sleeve cut across Barnabas’s forearm, and long pale fingers brazenly wrapped around Jonah’s holding the crystal stem. “Please,” came the accompanying voice, “allow me.”

_Wasn’t I with Barnabas?,_ Jonah thought foggily, eyelids fluttering, static in his skull receding.

_Wasn’t there a party?_

_Wasn’t I supposed to be getting a drink?_

“Yes, yes, and yes,” purred a honeyed voice on Jonah’s ear, breath warm against his cheek.

It almost felt nice.

Except …

 _Sore,_ Jonah thought, _so sore why am I sore stop that …_

“Stop that,” Jonah slurred at last, through a throat as thick as cotton. He didn’t know what he wanted to stop, only that something was not right. He slowly became aware that he was on his chest and knees, arms drawn tight behind him. Jonah tentatively tried to bring his hands in front so that he could push himself up off the—floor? No, he was on a bed, and his front half to his chin was sinking into it.

Jonah came up against scratchy resistance around his wrists, staying his arms. _Rope, oh, god, rope, what—_

Understanding came cruelly crashing into Jonah all at once. The numbness in his limbs to which he had awoken drained away in a heartbeat. His eyes flew open wide and he tried to thrash wildly. His wrists were tied together. His knees were pried apart. He was being fucked.

 _“Stopstop_ —ahh!” Jonah shrieked, trying to twist onto his side to throw his assailant off him.

To Jonah’s horror, the stranger rutting between his thighs did not hit him or growl menacingly or anything like that but instead ran gentle hands up and down Jonah’s flanks. He tugged him back onto his lap with all the tenderness of a lover. Jonah’s rapist laid a lingering kiss on the back of his neck and made soft shushing noises into his hair.

“I got you,” the man swore, arcing up hard into Jonah’s cunt.

“Please, please,” Jonah begged. _“Who … ?”_

“It’s all right,” the man promised, reaching around to slide an elegant hand between Jonah’s legs from the front. His other arm wrapped around the soft skin below Jonah’s belly, bracing him up. Clever fingers formed a _V_ around Jonah’s clit and instantly knew the rhythm to begin stroking him off. The man nipped at the muscle where Jonah’s neck met his shoulder, and Jonah keened against his body.

 _“Don’t,”_ Jonah begged. He twisted his neck to try to see the other man’s eyes.

The man pressed a plethora of kisses on Jonah’s cheek. “But I am,” he said, tone outrageously kind as he split Jonah open on his cock again and again, “and I’m going to. And I’m going to take care of you.”

Jonah panted into the man’s mouth, unable to control his own body’s response.

“That’s better,” the man whispered, licking past Jonah’s lips and swiping his tongue over his. “So sweet,” he cooed. “You take me so well.” His thumb teased Jonah’s hood, and Jonah whined under the ministrations. “I haven’t had one of these in a long time,” the man chuckled darkly, and Jonah felt him smile against his mouth, all teeth—“but don’t think I don’t remember what you like.”

“Who—,” Jonah choked out, “you don’t know me, you’re thinking of someone else—”

“Never,” the man said. “I’ve never bothered to think of anyone _but_ you.” The man laughed, making a joke only he was in on. Then he shoved Jonah forward roughly and draped himself over his back. He rubbed Jonah’s clit in tight circles while the nails of his other hand bit into his hip. Jonah wailed into the mattress.

“You feel so good on my cock,” the man gasped, and Jonah wiggled reflexively. He straightened up to watch his shaft slide entirely from and back into Jonah’s dripping cunt, feeding it raw skin on skin. “No wonder you were such a slut,” he said wonderingly. He made it sound like a compliment. “Who wouldn’t want to feel this clench around them?” Jonah cried freely, the duvet growing damp from his tears, but his thighs nudged open helplessly for more.

“You’re perfect, Jonah Magnus,” the man said, petting his hair, “you’re so tight and slick and perfect and more of the men you spread so cheaply for should have told you that.”

Jonah came, convulsing with a shout, and gushing on both the man’s hand and his cock. He flattened against the bed, boneless and for a second aware of nothing but his own radiating contractions. The man snapped his hips against Jonah, grabbing both sides of his ass to spread him wide and painfully exposed. His motions stuttered as he pried a thumb past the ring of Jonah’s anus and flooded his cunt with white heat.

 _“Please,”_ Jonah whimpered desperately.

The man untied Jonah’s wrists, but Jonah had no fight in him to do anything about it. The man shuffled onto his side and brought Jonah down with him, spooning him and caressing his trembling flesh. It felt decadent to be in this man’s arms and full of his fluids leaking back out of him and Jonah didn’t understand and he hated it and it was so right.

_I don’t want it to feel so good._

“Just let it,” the man whispered against his back, and for an instant Jonah wondered if he had accidentally spoken aloud.

“I’m going to make you feel so good,” the man breathed, “and you are going to help me make such horrors, and you’ll have all the purpose you ever needed—and we will live forever.”

Jonah shuddered in his confusion.

The man nuzzled Jonah’s curls. “Sleep, sweet pet,” he ordered. “I’ll introduce myself in the morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> xx


	2. Chapter 2

Jonah did not wake up wrapped around another body, but he knew he was not alone before he opened his eyes. It was the sort of half-dreaming moment of comfortability, where one is past the point in a new partnership of pretending to not be sticky-hot while cuddling asleep, instead now knowing the weight of them from across the bed.

He wondered if he had gone home with Barnabas, or any other one of his lovers. But then he encountered the sunlight streaming in on his face, being covered by a cool hand tucking one of his red locks behind his ear. He smelled last night’s sex on its fingers, and then he remembered all too well.

Jonah did not panic. Panic had never saved him in the past, and surely this predicament would be no different. He surprised himself by turning into the touch, lips resting at the top of the man’s palm. His eyes fell heavy-hooded with mental exhaustion and rare vulnerability.

“So now what?” he croaked simply, throat raw.

“Now you look at me,” the man instructed quietly.

Jonah clenched his eyes shut for a blink, but it had never been in his nature to look away from harsh truths, even before he fell in with Smirke’s crowd. He rested his head on the pillow, distantly noting that he had been given one in his unconscious state, and stared back into the man’s eyes.

Jonah’s breathing caught in his windpipe. “No,” was all he said.

He was not saying no to looking. He was pleading no to what he saw.

“Who do you think I am?” the man asked in a crisp tone, pushing Jonah’s hair away from his temple to see him better. He cupped the back of his head, deceptively strong in holding him still.

“I don’t understand,” Jonah said, the volume of his voice needing to rise in order to hear himself over the blood thrumming in his ears. The man ran his finger down the delicate ridge of Jonah’s cheekbone, and Jonah’s heart rate quickened more.

The man smirked. “Trust your instincts,” he said.

“You have my eyes,” Jonah said, terrified.

“Oh?” the man prodded, like he was refusing to let a wound heal over. “Plenty of people have green eyes.

**“Tell me how you know that my eyes are yours.”**

Jonah gasped sharply as his entire frame froze rigid. “Because I recently gave myself over as a servant of The Eye,” he confessed under Compulsion in a rapid rush, “an Entity beyond human understanding of the Fear of being watched and exposed, the feeling of eyes upon you, the dread that your most carefully crafted secrets could come out and ruin you at any time.

“I am still coming into my cursed gifts that are granted by that eldritch Power in return for my dedication,” Jonah gritted out. He moved to claw at his own throat, but the man grabbed his wrists and held them between their two chests. “Thus I admittedly do not claim to comprehend or control them, but I _know_ that I will. I _am_ intended for great things and always have been. _My_ Power will prevail over all the Fear Entities, of which there are thirteen more.”

Jonah tried to wrestle out of the man’s grip, but he felt weakened by his glare. He physically could not stop talking. “So to answer your question: I do not know how I know. But it is a fact that under the auspices of The Eye, or Beholding, my eyes are as much a metaphysical extension of me as they are a mere mortal muscle.

“And I am shaken to my core to see the esoteric blueprint of my _self_ burning back at me.”

“Very good, Jonah,” the man crooned, releasing a wrist to drag his knuckles down the side of Jonah’s face. Jonah sobbed. “Believe me,” he said, “Beholding is fed, Seeing you so exposed.”

Jonah already knew there was more to come. “Please stop,” he begged. “This is worse,” he said, “take what you took from me last night, but do not steal these things …”

“I took nothing from you last night that you would not have freely given had I paid a little more time and attention to you,” the man said, “and _DON’T_ try to tell me otherwise. Now,” he continued, **“tell me why you chose to serve The Eye out of all the Fears.”**

Jonah jerked violently. “You already know,” he said helplessly, “for you Know every inch of me and my deadliest secrets, inside and out—and even if you hadn’t before last night, you have seen it all now.

“And furthermore, aside from the obvious … I have always wanted to watch. I have always wanted to see. I want to _know,_ even wisdom that is seemingly unattainable or forbidden. It is my right, and it would be a waste of my intellect not to pursue it.”

The man chuckled, wrapping an arm around Jonah’s back. “I love your arrogance,” he said, “naturally.”

“So are you a demon then?” Jonah demanded. “Sent to punish me for my sin of pride, and for turning my back on God?”

The man pulled Jonah closer. “There is no god but our own,” he assured him, kissing his forehead, “or if there is, then he hates us and turned his back on us a long time ago, so we owe him nothing.”

Jonah’s mouth was slack, but he did not fight it when the man ducked his head to kiss him deeply. Jonah tasted like despair, and the man licked the salt from his tongue. Jonah eventually arched forward into the kiss, taking the closest thing to comfort that he could get.

“You may call me Elias,” the man spoke softly into Jonah’s mouth. He huffed out an ironic laugh. “You know that’s a lie, my darling, but it will be less confusing, among other reasons.” He caught Jonah’s bottom teeth under his thumb and pressed down just enough to feel the bite. “And you _are_ meant for great things, and I am here to help you achieve them.” He tilted his head to suck on Jonah’s lower lip, and Jonah moaned against his will. “You are so precious,” Elias breathed reverently at the sound.

Elias nudged Jonah’s nose with his own, tracing up and down the bridge. “Finally, something I can love,” he said, an unexpected hitch in his voice.

“This is not love,” Jonah said shakily.

“Mm,” Elias hummed, hands traveling to support Jonah’s ass and yank his lower body onto him, so that Jonah’s folds, still slick from the night before, parted around either side of his half-hardened prick. “That’s up to you,” he said, sounding unconcerned either way. “I can adore you better than anyone else ever could. Not because you don’t deserve to be adored by anyone you want, Jonah—but because you deserve to be Seen and Known down to the marrow of your bones.”

Jonah shivered, hesitated, then dropped his hand on Elias’s hip and spread his fingers around it.

“That’s right,” Elias said encouragingly, leaning in to kiss Jonah’s receptive mouth once more.

“So what do you want from me?” Jonah asked.

Elias grinned freakishly wide. “Ever the pragmatist,” he said with affection. Then he replied: “A king. A co-ruler. Someone to win with, and to keep me company when I end this world and build a better one.”

Jonah rocked over Elias’s thighs, subtly chasing delicious friction in spite of his skepticism. “You did not perform whatever dark magic it took to bring you here solely to take a lover.”

“My dear Jonah,” Elias purred, “if you can’t trust me, then who can you trust?”

“Literally anyone,” Jonah snipped, “more than myself. Answer me.”

Elias drew back slightly, eyes darkening as he slid his hand up the nape of Jonah’s neck. He seemed to be weighing possible responses before determining that it was worth telling some truth.

“Our ritual requires a person to act as a linchpin,” he said seriously. “You still have so much humanity in you, Jonah,” Elias said, hand grazing down Jonah’s side to stop at his belly. “It’s truly charming.” His fingertips danced circles on Jonah’s skin. “I on the other hand am a monster,” he said.

“And you need someone human?” Jonah guessed.

“I doubt it,” Elias said, hand dropping down even further to pet the pale skin above Jonah’s mound. “I doubt it could hurt, either. But no. _You_ need _me;_ you need the ideal acolyte of our patron—and I need the ideal womb.”

Jonah’s eyes flew open wide in understanding, and he nearly leapt from the bed before Elias sat up like a shot and grabbed him. He pinned Jonah’s arms against his sides to stop him from tearing wildly at air. _“I can’t,”_ Jonah panted, _“you can’t, you might as well kill me, I won’t—”_

“Jonah,” Elias interrupted coldly, “stop these dramatics at once!”

“Please,” Jonah was hysterical, “you _know_ I can’t, have mercy—”

 _“Jonah!”_ Elias shouted. “You will live forever!”

Jonah collapsed with a cry onto Elias’s lap, back curved against his front. Elias tucked him in hard against himself and rained kisses wherever teardrops fell. “You will live forever, Jonah,” Elias swore, gentler now. “And as if that weren’t enough, _which I know it is_ … you will live forever with a _family.”_

“A family?” Jonah repeated brokenly.

“A family that will never die!” Elias declared. “A family that won’t _throw you away like human garbage!”_

Jonah bawled, folding in on himself.

“It doesn’t have to be just someone I choose,” Elias railed on, “we could have a dynasty, Jonah! A worthy holy family, a trinity … an _heir,_ Jonah! A child that would actually make a difference _because it would be **yours!**_ A boy, Jonah, of your own …”

“Or a girl?” Jonah tested between scalding breaths, too curious not to ask questions.

“Of course!” Elias urged, a manic gleam in his eye. “Our sweet princess, or a prince, or both, or neither, _don’t you get it, Jonah?_ It wouldn’t _matter,_ in a world that _we_ made! Can you imagine, a little girl who would never be hurt in all the ways you were hurt as a little boy? Can you even _imagine_ such a world??”

Jonah turned slightly in Elias’s lap, his chest still heaving.

“The three of us would never suffer,” Elias promised, “and even better—everyone who deserved to suffer _would._

_“Forever.”_

Jonah buried his face in Elias’s neck. “I’m scared,” he wept.

Elias hugged Jonah brutally tight. “That’s _perfect,”_ he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> xx


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Mind the dark porn tag!!** It's no joke! This story never stops trying to be filthy because it's sad, and it never stops being sad to be filthy. Enjoy.

Jonah didn’t know how long he remained under the comforter, but he knew one thing: He felt better than he had in a long time.

Why did it feel so fantastic, to be utterly spent and devoid of tears? It was as if Elias had gouged something rotting out of him and he’d fought the necessary treatment like a child, but now that he was scalpelled and sutured it had turned out to be for the best.

The mattress bowed as Elias settled in behind him, and then Elias’s fingertips were trailing down Jonah’s back over the blankets. Jonah sniffled.

“Pet,” Elias said, “I wanted to allow you to process, but it’s not healthy for you to stay like this all day, either.”

Jonah scoffed. _“‘Healthy,’”_ he slung back. “Like it’s of any concern to you that I’m healthy.”

“Doesn’t it go without saying that nothing concerns me more?” Elias pointed out.

Jonah was still, then shuffled out of the sheets and blankets with caution. He was struck to see that it was dark now. He sat up on the edge of the bed, covering his lower half with a sheet, and Elias reached around him with a steaming cup on a saucer. “I brought you tea,” Elias said.

Jonah wanted to laugh with the inanity of it, but he thought that if he started laughing he might spiral out and never stop. “Tea,” he repeated.

“Please,” Elias said, touching Jonah’s nape with his other hand, “I know you have not eaten. At least have some tea.” When Jonah did not move, Elias nuzzled his neck and grinned against the skin. “I know how you take it,” he taunted.

Now Jonah did laugh, a jagged burst, but he took the proffered drink and blew across the surface of it out of habit. “Is it your intention to drug me again?” he asked, tone neutral.

“No,” Elias said quietly, pressing a chaste kiss to Jonah’s shoulder. “I don’t want to have to do that. And besides … you will not try to run again.”

He was right. Of course he would know. Jonah sipped in silence. “The tea is good,” he said then.

Elias wrapped his arms around Jonah’s middle. “There you are,” he said into Jonah’s back.

They sat wordlessly for a while. Jonah drank his tea and watched the full moon out the window as it watched back like an enormous alabaster eye. “Elias,” Jonah said only for himself, tasting the name in his mouth.

“Mm,” Elias hummed, nosing up Jonah’s hair. “I like the way that sounds in your accent.”

“I don’t have an accent,” Jonah bristled, his brogue briefly thickened with annoyance. _“You_ have an accent.”

Elias leaned forward to nip at Jonah’s ear. “I’ll have you know that some people spend years trying to learn how to talk like this.”

It frightened Jonah, how little effort it took for Elias to be charming.

 _Could it really be this easy?,_ he wondered, raising his cheek to Elias’s lips.

“If you let it,” Elias said. His hands moved up to the lower swell of Jonah’s breasts, thumbs passing over the nipples. Jonah tilted his head back with faint enjoyment.

“Don’t do that,” Jonah said.

“What?” Elias asked innocently. “Seduce you?”

“Don’t pick things out of my head,” Jonah said. “I didn’t choose this.”

“I’m afraid you did,” Elias said. “If you hadn’t, I would not be here.”

Jonah blinked, then dropped his cup and saucer down on the nightstand. Elias released him as he turned to face him, sitting crosslegged. “Because you really are me from the future,” Jonah said in amazement. “Please tell me about it,” he insisted. “What time are you from?”

Elias sat shirtless, and wearing the most peculiar black satin trousers, not like any nightshirt Jonah had ever seen. He spread his legs around Jonah and pushed himself closer. “I came from the year 2015,” he dropped the bomb casually.

Jonah was astonished. “Almost two centuries from now!”

Elias took Jonah’s hands and lifted them to brush his lips against his knuckles. “I considered trying to take you there so that you’d have a safer pregnancy,” he said, pretending not to notice the way Jonah flinched at the word, “but I fear that time may be of the essence in regard to raising a child for our purposes.”

Jonah opened his mouth, then closed it. His eyes went wide with yearning. “Are you saying that it would be safer for someone like me to be pregnant then?” he said all on one exhalation. “Surely if mankind has had 200 years to evolve—are you saying that two men like us could go together unremarked upon?”

Elias stiffened. “Jonah,” he said shortly, “I meant that you’d be safer with modern medicine.”

“Of course,” Jonah said frantically, “but as such a thing as medicine advances, so too must society—”

“Jonah,” Elias said coarsely, grabbing Jonah’s shoulders to interrupt. “Many things look better in the future, but society can never advance. People are disappointing and undeserving of your compassion, and they would disappoint you for 200 years if I allowed you to continue on without me.”

Jonah’s lip quivered, and Elias pushed down the way the sight of it made him ache. “Does nothing change?” Jonah asked meekly.

 _“We_ shall change it,” Elias said fiercely. “We’ll remake it.”

“You make it sound so magnanimous,” Jonah said.

“It’s not,” Elias said, “nor will I pretend it is. It’s just what _we_ deserve. It’s what I want for you.”

“For me,” Jonah said back in a hollow voice. “There is no ‘me,’” he said.

“Jonah,” Elias said warningly.

Jonah stared down at his palms in his lap. They suddenly seemed to be very far away. “Oh, god,” he said. “I’m just a shadow of you. _An unfinished draft …”_

“Jonah—look at me,” Elias said.

“None of it has any meaning,” Jonah continued.

Elias gripped Jonah’s forearms, nails digging into his skin. “Jonah,” he said sharply, “you cannot do this now. I’m no longer equipped to help you with it. Listen to my voice,” he said. “Only _I_ can protect you. _I_ can be ruthless for you. And you won’t have to give up anything in you that’s still kind and I will be so pleased to possess something as lovely as you _but I need you to do the bare minimum by staying sane._ Do you understand?”

Jonah nodded eagerly.

Elias rubbed up Jonah’s arms to clamp them higher and hauled him in to kiss him fervently. Jonah licked at the seam of Elias’s lips until Elias opened for him and he could feast on the taste of him as if he were starving. Elias’s pleased rumbling sound of surprise was muffled and drowned out by Jonah moaning into his mouth. He began to clamber up onto Elias’s lap before Elias tore away what little sheet still covered him and flipped Jonah onto his back.

Jonah arched up as Elias moved down his body, stopping first to suck possessively hard at his nipples. He rolled them in the loop where his thumb met his hand, latching and tugging each one in turn. Jonah cried out, and Elias laid his head between his breasts and bit into the milky flesh.

Elias continued to kiss his way past Jonah’s ribs, stopping when he reached his stomach to nibble at the silkily untouched areas. Jonah rutted beneath him, trying in vain to raise his hips, and Elias smiled when he felt Jonah paint his hot slick under his chin.

“Tell me what you want,” Elias said, the words ghosting warmly over Jonah’s mound. “You’re going to learn that you have to do some of the work to get what you want.”

“Please,” Jonah gasped, “I don’t know what to ask, no one’s ever done it …”

“No?” Elias verified. He kissed the indent above Jonah’s hood feather-lightly, then traced over it with the tip of his tongue. “That’s because you never made anyone do it. Are you going to make me eat this pretty pussy? Or are you just going to let me use it without making you come?”

“Make you eat what?” Jonah choked. “Let me come, please …”

Elias laughed loudly and unexpectedly, making Jonah twist beneath him. “We didn’t call it that ‘back now,’ did we?” He licked a long slow line up Jonah’s slit, as if to reward him for being adorable. Jonah wailed. “What was that word—a _honeypot?”_ Elias chuckled when he saw Jonah bury his face off to one side in the pillow. “Jonah, look at me.”

Jonah’s fingers clung bloodlessly tight around the poles of the cast iron headboard. He raised his head.

“This is your pussy, Jonah,” Elias said in a pedantic tone, sliding a finger in. Jonah’s tight muscles trembled around it. “Such a sweet pussy. Let me hear you say it.”

Jonah gaped, overwhelmed. “That’s … my pussy,” he said obediently.

“Mmm,” Elias said appreciatively, lowering his head again to chew a couple flowering bruises on Jonah’s inner thighs. He slid a second finger into his cunt and worked them back and forth. Elias licked large ovals around Jonah’s outer folds, and Jonah sobbed. Elias stopped immediately and raised his head. “What a nice pussy, Jonah,” he praised. “What should I do with it?”

“Please eat my pussy,” Jonah whispered.

“What was that, Jonah? You’re going to have to be a lot more powerful than that if you plan on doing great things with Beholding. What do you deserve, Jonah?”

“Please,” Jonah begged louder, “Elias, I want your mouth on my pussy until I come!”

Elias groaned, flattening himself more on the bed to nose his way into Jonah’s dripping gash. He sucked Jonah’s inner folds past his teeth, letting go to circle his tongue around his hood. He thrust a third finger inside him and started to pump him relentlessly while he bobbed on Jonah’s clit. Jonah was blush-pink and pulsating, his juices pooling beneath him.

When it came to sex, two things were true of Elias Bouchard as a result of having been around for 200 years: that he was good at it, and that he was often bored with it.

There was nothing boring about this experience.

Elias looked up, breathing hard. He withdrew his fingers. “Give me your hands, Jonah.”

Jonah let go of the headboard and held his hands out to Elias. Elias intertwined his fingers with one and pressed it against Jonah’s hip, then guided the other one to his hair. Jonah took the hint, fisting the back of Elias’s head and riding his face forcefully. He dragged Elias forward and bucked selfishly on his nose and tongue. When Jonah came hard in a full spray, Elias moaned gratefully into him in that rich low way that vibrated through Jonah’s pelvis.

Elias sat up and pulled off his tented pajama pants, balling them up and throwing them down hard onto the floor. He stretched out over top of Jonah. Elias put his hands on either side of Jonah’s head, not needing to guide his cock when Jonah’s pussy was so completely soaked and ready. Jonah had no time to think before Elias slammed himself to the hilt inside him.

Jonah wiggled his hips, thighs spread. They panted into each other’s mouths, both pinned by eye contact. “Elias,” Jonah breathed, hooking his arms under Elias’s to hold him close.

“What am I fucking you with, Jonah?” Elias asked, lips brushing together.

“Your cock …”

 _“Your_ cock,” Elias corrected. He dropped his head so that he was speaking dark and rich directly onto the shell of Jonah’s ear. “That’s your cock, Jonah. Everything I am is you. That’s my sweet, beautiful pet’s prick, just stroking himself off from the inside, feeling the full weight of himself … How does it feel to have a cock, Jonah?”

“Oh, god … it feels amazing, Elias …”

“My pet fucks me so well,” Elias murmured. “I’m so lucky to have him and his thick cock, stretching me out—are you going to come again, Jonah? Do you have a nice load to fill me up with?”

“Holy … ! Good god— _Elias—!!”_

Elias wrapped his fingers around the backs of Jonah’s knees and folded him in half as he poured into him with a shout of his name. He kept him there, Jonah’s knees nearly behind his head until Elias was too soft to stay buried. He finally drew onto his side, gazing at Jonah with undisguised fascination.

Jonah stared back, inching closer nervously until he could pull his fists up to his face and burrow into Elias’s chest. Elias ducked his head to catch Jonah in a languid kiss. He reached between Jonah’s legs, which parted instantly for him as if they had been doing this for hundreds of years.

Elias purred into Jonah’s mouth when he dipped his fingers inside him, just enjoying the feeling of this lovely man’s cunt so heavy with _his_ seed. He played lazily, alternately feeling it flood onto his palm, or curling his fingers to feed it back into him. Jonah only whined, deliriously affectionate from pleasure.

Elias smiled. Bodies were simple to train, and then hearts and minds were sure to follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> xx


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Edited to add:** @WALDOS_SMUT DREW [THE ENDING OF THIS CHAPTER](https://twitter.com/waldos_smut/status/1341169544266596352?s=20) OMG!! It's so gorgeous?!
> 
> Today someone in the server asked me why Elias drugged and raped Jonah in the beginning when he knew he could have easily seduced him. That is an excellent question, and we are building up to an answer, I swear :)

Horrifying existential implications aside, Jonah found it unsettlingly easy to be with Elias.

Elias treated Jonah like he worshiped him. It was more than he needed to do to overpower him _or_ persuade him, and much better than many of Jonah’s lovers had ever treated him. When Jonah told Elias that most men had refused to hold him after sex (something Elias clearly knew), steel had flashed in Elias’s eyes, and Elias had asked him very politely if Jonah would like for him to kill anyone.

It was a sweet gesture, Jonah thought.

Jonah learned early on that unlike himself, Elias did not need sleep anymore. He was also a lot stronger than he looked, so much so in fact that it was blatantly supernatural in ways which did not apply to Jonah. There was no possible way that Jonah was escaping the quaint townhouse where Elias had him sequestered (and Jonah wondered how Elias had ever acquired such a place), and even if he did, he had no idea where they were.

Jonah should not have accepted this. And yet he embraced it.

Jonah felt frighteningly seen, known inside and out, just as Elias had promised. Elias brought him to new heights of pleasure and Jonah was powerless not to consign himself to the ride. Elias knew things, whether through Beholding or through knowing Jonah; he knew precisely the triggers that made Jonah spiral out in his mind and his terror, and although Elias readily stated that he knew little empathy anymore, when he dragged Jonah under a blanket and laid with him in silence, it was a far greater comfort than any attempt to make him talk about his feelings as others often had.

Besides, Elias was undeniable proof that Jonah could make it.

If Elias didn’t seem to understand sensitivity, he still encouraged it in Jonah. There were art supplies in the townhouse, and Elias had set up an easel for Jonah in the room that caught the most sun, through tall windows with only fine white sheers for curtains.

When Jonah told Elias that he had almost forgotten how to paint, Elias had said, “Yes, I’m aware,” before leaving him alone in the room.

At first Jonah thought that Elias’s affection was only a means to an end, but Jonah slowly came to realize that there was some greater instinct there, too. Elias felt the edges of something, in addition to wanting to win, and Jonah could see that he chased it. It appeared to be a calculating, reptilian feeling half the time, but Elias seemed to derive genuine pleasure from doing things designed to make Jonah feel safe _(from others,_ Jonah reminded himself) and loved, and shouldn’t that count, to be consciously trying to feel?

The other half of the time Elias ran hot, no in-between, and Jonah didn’t feel threatened by him personally, but he did get the sense that it was a hair separating Elias’s erotic passion from his rage.

Elias was intriguing and alien beyond belief. Jonah craved to catalogue him. He couldn’t have left him even if he still wanted. Besides, there were too many questions unanswered.

Jonah curled beneath Elias’s arm on the settee facing the fireplace. They had not spoken for a while, simply watching the fire together, having settled into a few routines like this. Jonah tilted his head to look up, rubbing his cheek against Elias’s chest. “How do you choose them?” he asked, a hairline crack forming in the peace.

Elias knew what he meant, of course he did, he didn’t even have to Know. It was one of the many elephants in the room between them. He dropped his chin on top of Jonah’s hair. “It’s just their own rotten luck,” he said, a shrug in his voice.

“But surely you have a system,” Jonah pressed, “or something you look for.”

 _“You_ look for an attractive vessel,” Elias said with a grin. He kissed Jonah’s forehead. “I’ll tell you this right now: you never stop being vain.”

Jonah blushed, hidden by the reddened lowlights of the crackling fire. (Though obviously, nothing was hidden from Elias—nothing would ever be hidden from Elias.) “Do you not try to constrain yourself to the ruthless and wicked?” Jonah asked. “To those who may deserve it?”

Elias tenderly raised Jonah’s head with one forefinger and kissed him chastely on the lips. “We are the ruthless,” he said, “and there is no such thing as deserving or wicked—only in our way, or not.”

“Elias,” Jonah’s words fell upon his lips, “can I ever be more than a tool to you?”

“I lack the means to make you believe that you are so much more than that,” Elias said crisply.

“Snake,” Jonah huffed, “don’t think that I don’t hear your deflections and non-answers.”

Elias chuckled, hugging Jonah closer. “What would you have me say, Jonah?” he asked.

“Would you have ever taken an interest in me, if we’d somehow met and I weren’t what I am to you?”

“What is the purpose of that question,” Elias asked, “when you _are_ what you are to me?”

“Do you think of me as anything more than a part of you?”

Elias hummed. “I can Hear you,” he said, “and your thoughts are your own. Does that answer your question?”

Jonah considered that.

“Do you think I’m truly real?” Jonah asked quietly. “Or am I a specter, a long-dead spirit of your past?”

Elias raked his nails up Jonah’s back, making him shiver. “You certainly feel real to me, Jonah,” he said.

Jonah burrowed in deeper against Elias’s side, watching how the licks of light from the flame sharpened Elias’s already high cheekbones. For a moment they said nothing. Jonah was, in fact, sulking. “Being caged like a canary is driving me to be obsessed with these questions,” he sniffed.

“You want to go somewhere,” Elias said. He grinned cattily. “My little househusband is set to nag me because we never go anywhere anymore.”

Jonah smacked Elias’s side. “Actually, we’ve never gone anywhere, ever, since you kidnapped me. _Please,_ Elias”—Jonah fixed him with wide eyes, wet in the firelight—“you know you have me ensnared. I’m not going anywhere. But it is maddening in here. And besides,” his lips curved in a subtle smirk, “don’t you wish to see all of your old friends?”

“I can hardly believe this,” Elias said fondly, sounding impressed. “I have 200 years of more experience doing it, and yet you’re trying to manipulate me.” He bent to kiss Jonah’s cheek. “The audacity.”

“Jonathan Fanshawe’s yearly party is coming up,” Jonah said casually.

Elias twitched by Jonah’s side, and Jonah smiled smugly: a tell.

“Yes, yes, well-played,” Elias acknowledged grudgingly. “As you wish, my pet,” he said. “We shall call upon the good doctor.”

Jonah Magnus’s falling-out with Jonathan Fanshawe was not slated for nearly a decade, and Jonathan was as enthusiastic to see him as ever.

“Jonah!” he exclaimed, bringing him and Elias each a glass of champagne, which they accepted graciously. “Everyone has been wondering where you went!” Jonathan patted Jonah on the back between his shoulder blades. “You’ve lost weight,” he said, with some concern.

“The thrill of love when it is still new will do that to you,” Jonah said, laying it on thick and preening prettily. He smirked when he caught Elias’s expression, who looked like he was biting back a laugh.

“Love!” Jonathan did a double take between Jonah and Elias, but he appeared to be sincerely happy to hear the news. “It was only a month ago that I saw dear Barnabas, and he said you had been whisked away the same week!”

It was putting it mildly to say that Jonathan Fanshawe kept progressive company, and Jonah unabashedly insinuated himself under Elias’s arm for all to see. “Well, they say that when you know, you know,” Jonah said cheerily. “May I present my companion, Elias Bouchard? Elias, this is Dr. Jonathan Fanshawe.”

Jonathan bowed. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Bouchard. I am honored.”

“The pleasure is all mine, Dr. Fanshawe, I am sure,” Elias said, returning the bow. “Jonah has told me a lot about you. He speaks very highly of you.”

Jonah nudged Jonathan playfully. “Elias shares in our disposition,” Jonah said, his tone conspiratorial. “I wish that you may become comfortable addressing him as you address me—and do know that there are _no_ secrets between him and me … As far as I’m concerned, the two of you are more than welcome to become as close as you and I have been for so long.”

Jonathan arched an eyebrow, smiling rakishly. “Is that so,” he said rather than asked. “In that case, I ought to instead say that it is a pleasure to meet you, _Elias,_ and I insist that you call me Jonathan.” He winked at Jonah. “This is wonderful for you,” Jonathan said to him. “I am glad for it.”

What Jonathan knew, and had no way of knowing that Elias knew he did, was the extent of which the world had been unkind to Jonah in regard to such things as sex and romance. It had taken a great deal of maneuvering on Jonah’s part to dodge many courters who had sought a wife, and a mother to their future children. However, escaping that dark pit to live as he pleased had come with a new set of challenges.

By this time, Jonah had plentiful friends and lovers, Jonathan and Barnabas and others, who bore respect for him—in varying degrees, but always still present. But it had taken plenty of trial and error to find his own little clan, as they were. Numerous men and women alike had taken him home and been disappointed by what they found. Worse still were the ones who treated him as a novelty.

And then there were the ones who sent him crawling to his dear Dr. Fanshawe, to bleed on his doorstep yet again.

Jonah knew that all this weighed on Jonathan’s mind now. “Thank you, Jonathan,” he said softly.

Elias knew too what was being left unsaid even if he couldn’t read minds, and if it felt any differently this time that he tucked Jonah in closer to his body—any _realer_ than the other times—then that was his business and his alone. “I owe you a debt of gratitude as well,” Elias said. Jonah turned to look at him, surprised at the openness in his voice. “You were very good to Jonah when he needed it most.”

Jonathan shot him a look of understanding. “I expect you to be good to him as well,” he said, not unkindly, but barely concealing the knife edge in his words.

“Of course,” Elias said, his cooler demeanor returning to him as swiftly as it had been lowered. “Treating Jonah well and ensuring the best for him are paramount to my concerns. That is actually one reason why I was looking forward to seeing you.”

“Oh?” Jonathan prompted curiously.

 _Oh, you bastard,_ Jonah thought pointedly for Elias to hear, but by now Jonah felt more eye-rollingly tired than angry. He had suddenly realized why Elias had been so quick to agree to the party. Elias’s eyes danced when he caught Jonah scowling at him.

“I know you are aware that the Magnuses have not been supportive of our Jonah for quite some time. It will surely come as no surprise to you to hear that I am estranged from any family as well.” Elias paused long enough to let sympathy set in.

“Unfortunately that does come as no surprise,” Jonathan commiserated, “and I am sorry to hear it.”

Elias waved him off. “Thank you,” he said, “but all that matters to me now is Jonah.” He smiled with too many teeth. “What I mean to say is, we have no relations to assist us with more private conditions. And even if we did, it is doubtful to say that we would trust them to care for Jonah intimately and with kindness.”

Jonathan raised his hand to his collar. “Jonah,” he breathed, “does this man mean to tell me …”

Jonah evaluated his position. He digested that he actually _wanted_ Elias in his life. He wanted to keep touching him, and he wanted the mortification of such an abhorrent form of Beholding. He also knew that he envied the power he had witnessed in Elias, and Jonah further knew that he would do just about anything to never die.

He wanted to never die with Elias.

“It’s true,” Jonah said decidedly. He kissed Elias’s cheek, before leveling a steady gaze at Jonathan. Jonah’s smile was genuine, much to his own amazement. “We are hoping to father a child.”

Jonathan covered his mouth, then dropped his hand to his side. “That is fantastic!” he said. “Oh, Jonah! I never expected to see you so fulfilled with one man!”

Jonah hid his growing grin in Elias’s shoulder, until Elias ducked to sweetly catch Jonah’s lips with his own.

“And you,” Jonathan said to Elias, the threat in his voice rising, “you _will_ treat him as a man. This changes nothing.”

Perhaps not the most tactful thing to toss out, but Elias understood both the times (for which Jonathan was an astonishing ally), and Jonathan and Jonah’s closeness. Elias felt a pang of loss and regret for Jonathan Fanshawe before shoving it down. “I assure you, Doctor,” Elias said, “I am the last person in need of such a reminder. You truly were a good man, and a good friend.”

“There is no other doctor we would trust with this,” Jonah said. He absolutely meant it.

“I will provide any service that I can, you have my word,” Jonathan swore. “Although I confess, that childbirth isn’t exactly my area of expertise …”

“I trust that when the time comes that you will Know what to do,” Elias said cryptically.

Jonathan clapped Elias heartily on the shoulder. “Well, I am still greeting guests,” he said, “and I believe I saw Mr. Lukas arrive. Jonah,” Jonathan continued, “you know my living like the back of your hand.” Jonathan gave Jonah a kiss on the cheek, beaming excitedly at both of them. “This calls for celebration. Do make yourself _completely_ at home anywhere on my grounds.” He grinned wickedly before walking away from the two of them.

Elias leaned in to discreetly nip at Jonah’s ear. “You heard the man,” he murmured, “let’s make ourselves at home.” He twined his fingers with Jonah’s and let Jonah lead the way, until they reached an alcove in an empty wing.

“So,” Elias said, walking Jonah back against the wall. He gripped Jonah’s hips and trailed kisses down his jaw. “Hoping to father a child, are we?”

“Did I ever have any choice?” Jonah asked. _“Ahh!”_ He cried out as Elias yanked his cravat to one side and sank his teeth into his neck.

Elias licked the brutalized area. “You cannot lie to me, Jonah,” Elias purred against his flesh. His hands traveled down to undo Jonah’s breeches. “You’ve chosen to submit to me. You’ve chosen to experience new things with me, and to see, and to know.” Elias’s hand curved over Jonah’s skin to cover his pubic mound possessively. “That is your choice. You’re not weak; you could continue to fight me if you didn’t deep down desire to honor me.”

He lifted that hand to slide two fingers into Jonah’s mouth at the same time that he kissed him, thrusting them in to gag him as his tongue darted across his lips. Jonah vibrated from stimulation. Elias took his fingers slicked with Jonah’s spit and bent them into his cunt. His thumb dragged in little circles through the dark auburn thatch of hair above it. Jonah tilted his hips greedily, then made a sound of impatience when Elias took his hand back to tug off Jonah’s boots and breeches the rest of the way.

“Look at you,” Elias said, “fully naked from the waist down when there’s a whole party going on in the ballroom. It’s like you _want_ to be seen and exposed more for the little whore that they already know that you are.”

“Elias …” Jonah pleaded.

“Hm?” Elias cupped the bulge at the front of his trousers. “Is this what you want?”

“Yes—please …”

Elias thumbed open the button of his trousers, grasping himself by the base of his shaft and pulling his prick out of his clothes. He gave it a few solid strokes. “I’d like to see you taste it,” he said, “now that you know your place a little better. Put on a nice show for the other people here to walk in on,” he encouraged. “Can I see you on your knees, Jonah? Can I see how pretty you’ll be with my cock in your mouth?”

Jonah dropped to his knees. He didn’t know why it felt so good to do whatever Elias told him to do, but oh god, how it did. Elias twisted his fingers in Jonah’s hair and held his head still. He painted the head of his cock over Jonah’s lips, and they parted for Elias but he did not slip inside. He observed how the beads of precum glistened on Jonah’s mouth like gloss. Only then did he begin to push inside, barely feeling Jonah’s teeth on the underside of his dick.

“You look wonderful on your knees, Jonah,” Elias praised, and he felt a low rumbling in Jonah’s throat roll over the head of his cock. Jonah reached up to wrap his arms around Elias’s waist, and Elias started to thrust. “So beautiful like this,” he said, biting his lip. “You really are.”

Elias tugged Jonah’s face into his pubic hair and shook with the feeling of being buried past his sputtering gag reflex. He wiped the tears from Jonah’s eyes with his thumb before pulling him back for air. When he drew completely out of Jonah’s mouth with a pop, Jonah gasped sharply. “Stand up,” Elias said, very gently.

Jonah stood carefully, unsteady on his feet, and Elias touched his lower back to brace him. He kissed Jonah’s mouth and rocked two fingers back inside him. He smiled when he found Jonah dripping between his thighs. “Really?” Elias mused. “Is that what gets you wettest? Choking on a cock, not even touching yourself?

“You know what I think, Jonah?” Elias continued. “I think you like feeling useful. That’s a tiny hidden part of why you became a servant to something so profoundly bigger than yourself. So you like being a little cum deposit, or having your throat turned into a cock sleeve, and you would secretly like to be bred because I’d be getting good use out of you.”

Jonah moaned helplessly.

“All those eyes on you,” Elias went on cruelly. “What would people think if you were obviously pregnant? After all the lengths you went to start over where no one knew you? This handsome young man with such flawless tits straining with milk for _my_ child?” He added a third and fourth finger without warning, and Jonah yelped as Elias pumped him harder. “Imagine being so watched and violated by their knowledge of you. Just imagine how people would _talk.”_ Elias ripped his hand away to hoist Jonah’s ass up against the wall, and Jonah hooked his ankles around Elias’s middle.

Elias groaned as Jonah sank down on his prick. “You fit me so well,” he complimented, kissing and biting Jonah’s neck while Jonah whimpered. “I think I molded your pussy to my cock. In hardly a _month._ You must have really been hurting for someone to come along and do it. I think that means I own this pussy. What do you think, Jonah?” Jonah panted heavily, and Elias streamed filthy words into his mouth. “Can I keep it? Can I mark it and fill it and pass it around and breed it, is it mine?”

“Y-yours,” Jonah whined.

“I’m going to take good care of it,” Elias said, thrusting up into Jonah’s sopping wet folds. His breath was beginning to come more ragged. “I want to take good care of you, you have no idea how much I—” Elias buried his face in Jonah’s neck, as if to prevent himself from saying more.

“Don’t stop,” Jonah begged. “Don’t ever stop or leave me …”

“I won’t,” Elias exhaled, shifting his hands to keep from dropping Jonah while he fucked him harder. “You can’t get rid of me, you’re mine. You’re mine.” He sucked on Jonah’s lower lip, then kissed the thin skin under his eyes. “I’m going to come inside you, Jonah,” he growled, “and then you’re going to get dressed, and we’re going back to the party, and I’m not even going to let you get cleaned up. You’re going to feel completely full of me. You’re going to feel it soak through your white clothes. You’re going to _reek_ of sex and everyone is going to see what a slut you are. But mine. _My_ precious slut, Jonah, and I adore you …”

“Oh, my god—Elias,” Jonah heaved.

“I like the sound of that,” Elias muttered into Jonah’s cheek.

“Please,” Jonah babbled senselessly.

 **“Tell me what _you_ want,”** Elias said.

_“Keep me …”_

Elias arched up inside Jonah’s cunt, legs shaking as he spilled inside him. A desperate moan escaped him.

And then Elias’s Eyes opened.

“What— _oh!!”_ Jonah jumped in Elias’s arms, but he did not scramble to get off of him, nor was he as scared as he probably should have been. Jonah stared.

Elias was resplendent. Elias was everything Jonah hoped that Beholding would be for himself. Everywhere Jonah could see Elias, a wide green eye greeted him. A glittering halo of glowing gold eyes circled behind his head, blinking around and around in waves. Jonah shuddered painfully as all of Elias ripped into Seeing him all at once.

“I’m pregnant, aren’t I?” Jonah asked in shock. “That’s what just happened.”

“I Saw it,” Elias choked out, peppering Jonah’s face and neck with kisses. His Eyes slowly dimmed away, blinking back into hiding. “I Knew exactly when it … Good god, you’re a gift, Jonah. That’s what you are. My sweet gift from the Watcher. All my work, finally paid off.”

Dazed, Jonah nosed at Elias’s face until he turned into a proper kiss, tongues exploring and weak noises being pulled out of both of them. “How does it feel?” Elias asked.

Jonah wasn’t sure if Elias was asking out of concern or a need to know, but he did not care either way. “Terrible—and right,” he conceded miserably. “I’m so afraid and I don’t know what’s going to happen and that feels so right.”

“Oh, Jonah, I’m so proud of you,” Elias whispered. “The whole world will be afraid, Jonah. Because of you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> xx


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **MIND THE NEW TAGS!!**

Of course, the problem for Eye avatars was that their burning desire to be beheld and exposed was by definition self-destructive.

Elias and Jonah had an audience.

It would seem to be out of character for him, the company Jonathan Fanshawe attracted. He was no servant to the Dread Powers, but he was the good friend and personal physician of Jonah Magnus, and that alone brought morally dubious fellows into his life. He found them fascinating enough to observe at grand balls (one might deduce that Fanshawe himself would have been a worthy follower of Beholding), but was wise enough to keep them at arm’s length.

Maxwell Rayner was one such fascinating man, inasmuch as he could be called a man, or a human being. His body was 82 years old. He was liable to get plenty more use out of it, being what he was, several more decades at least; but he was at that age in any avatar’s life where he was keeping an eye out, as it were, for a reasonable opportunity to be a young buck again.

Rayner saw an excellent opportunity.

It wasn’t as if Rayner had been hoping to chance upon two exhibitionists tangled around each other. He had stepped away from the candlelight of the party to walk an empty wing, sucking up the shadows and beginning to feel recharged. He sneered when he turned a corner and caught glimpse of Jonah Magnus being fucked against a wall. Typical, the brat. Rayner turned to slink back along the darkened walls of the hallway. And he would have left well enough alone, if not for what had happened next.

Rayner shielded his milky white eyes and hissed backwards, as the corridor was drenched in golden light. He lowered his arm, squinting, and stayed perfectly still until the light drew down and he could slip inside a patch of Dark. His eyes widened slightly at the sight before him.

The man between Jonah’s thighs, bracketing him against the wall and still buried deep inside him, was covered in eyes.

Well. _That_ was interesting.

“I’m pregnant, aren’t I?” Rayner heard Jonah ask in what was clearly a traumatized tone. Then, something like hope creeping into his voice: “That’s what just happened.”

Well—that was _very_ interesting.

Rayner tilted his head, regarding the pair coolly. The strange man was whispering sweet words in between kisses, nonhuman eyes closing seamlessly, nuzzling Jonah and cooing into his open mouth. Rayner’s lips pulled into a taut, thin line. He would have taken the man for a sucker, a fool for love that a player like Jonah Magnus could never give, if Rayner had not just seen a hint of his ability. Why didn’t Rayner know him?

Two things, though, Maxwell Rayner instantly knew.

First, that whatever this Beholding abomination had just planted inside Jonah Magnus, clever founder of that damned institute and temple to The Eye (and of course dear hubristic Jonah didn’t believe that was _so_ obvious), had the potential to be born something hideous and powerful.

Second, that if left unchecked, a child with such powerful Sight could be a grave danger to The Dark.

 _If_ Rayner left it unchecked. But there was another possibility, that Rayner felt might be the best of both worlds: mark pregnant Jonah Magnus, do something that would core him and leave him with a lifelong terror of The Dark, thus polluting the mistake inside him—and keep tabs on the superhuman baby from afar, for as many years as it took, until he needed a potent new vessel and it was time to collect his due.

Maybe that whim wouldn’t pan out, but the nice thing about it was, Rayner really had nothing to lose. Maybe Jonah wouldn’t even be pregnant anymore by the time Rayner was done toying with him. Such things were so fragile in the starting stages, after all. Well, that would fix any problem now, too, wouldn’t it?

Rayner tracked Jonah’s movements, like a snake using infrared. He watched Jonah’s new pet monster help him into his clothes. Rayner had seen Jonah peacock with many lovers, but he had never seen him seem to be so smitten with one before. Such pretty _bright_ things, smiling at each other like twin morning stars.

It was disgusting.

Jonah’s monster wrapped his arms around his waist, kissing him thoroughly before Jonah caught him by the wrist. They stumbled back toward the party, and Rayner remained in the dark, thinking about his next move.

Jonah hung from Elias’s neck, tinkling with a charmed laugh as an inarguably drunk Elias crowded him against a column. “So affectionate!” he exclaimed.

 _“M’not,”_ Elias said, setting an empty glass on the mantle, “m’not any different.” Night had fallen, and Fanshawe’s estate had taken on a warm and intimate glow from the fireplace, and the candelabras framed by tall mirrors.

Jonah grinned from ear to ear. “This is wildly entertaining,” he said.

“So what’d you,” Elias said, rubbing his mouth on top of Jonah’s hair, “‘d’you think I’d stop touching you? Like I—like I only wanted you because of my plans?”

Jonah pursed his lips. “Obviously the thought has crossed my mind more than once.”

“Mm,” Elias hummed drowsily against Jonah’s curls. He tugged Jonah close to face him and swayed lightly. “I _like_ touching you,” he mumbled.

Jonah caressed Elias’s cheek. “You are an enigma, Elias Bouchard,” he said. Elias’s eyes half-closed at the feel of Jonah’s fingertips. “Every time I believe I understand what sort of monster you are …”

“I turn out to be another kind?” Elias laughed.

“You would appear to turn out to be no kind,” Jonah said seriously. He touched his thumb to Elias’s lips, and Elias quirked his head to kiss the pad of it. “I regret to tell you, Mr. Bouchard, but you would seem to be quite human.”

Elias made an irritated sound. “Whatever makes you most content to believe,” he grumbled.

Jonah took Elias’s glass off the mantle, smiling like the cat that got the cream. “I believe I like you like this,” he teased, “so I’ll refill your glass to keep you so sweet. That way I can get myself one, too.”

Elias straightened up. “What— no, _you’re_ not having any,” he declared.

“And why not?”

“You can’t,” Elias said matter-of-factly. “You … Why do you think they brought back the gin tax?”

“Ah,” said Jonah. “Let me be sure I understand. What you mean to say is, that it would be dangerous for me to consume alcohol, because I’ve been pregnant for, what? Two hours now?”

Elias looked like he was puzzling out a very complicated math problem in his head. Then he nodded.

“Right,” Jonah drawled. “I’ll go get us drinks.”

Before Elias could protest further, Jonah started walking toward the opposite end of the room, Elias’s empty glass in hand.

Every light in the estate went out.

Actually, it was not just that the lights went out. It would be more accurate to say that the dark came _in._ And with it, the other partygoers collapsed onto the floor, locked in dreamless sleep.

It was an oppressive darkness, a weighted beast that pushed down on Jonah from all sides and could not be cut through with any degree of Sight. He dropped the glass, recoiling from the way it shattered. The sound was eaten up by the expanse of ink as though muffled by snow. “Elias?” Jonah tried, his heart racing. “Elias?? Jonathan—anyone??”

A sharp, metallic, oily smell filled Jonah’s nostrils. _Hello, Jonah. It’s been a while._

 _“Rayner,”_ Jonah growled. “What do you think you’re doing?” There was the slightest crackle of Beholding in the question, not enough to be compelling but noticeable. Under different circumstances, Jonah might have picked up on it and been pleased with himself.

A cold grease slid up Jonah’s hands, and he scrabbled to try to wipe it off. Rayner was little more than toxic gas and crude oil, but he could shape himself like this. Jonah could _hear_ the thing coagulating as it pumped itself into thick ropes coiling around his forearms. Jonah retched at the sensation. _I wanted to be first to offer my congratulations_ , Jonah Heard Rayner, an intrusive echo now that he was a thing without a mouth.

“What are you talking about?” Jonah snapped, all false bravado but filled with revulsion. He knew what Rayner meant.

 _I caught the tail end of your performance earlier. Forgive me_ , Rayner said, _I wasn’t trying to invade a private moment. I was merely passing through. But I heard the happy news about your state. You are to be a parent, I understand?_ Rayner’s tendrils flowed like syrup up Jonah’s arms and wrapped across his shoulders, massaging his back in a mockery of tenderness.

Jonah tried to jerk away but felt himself held in one place as a sticky pool had risen up over his feet. He swallowed. The Darkness cut his eyes and sliced deep into the heart of him. “Maxwell,” he implored openly, “whatever you mean for me, if I have ever acted as a friend to you, I beg you—please don’t do this.”

An abyssal laugh filled Jonah’s mind. _You do not understand friendship, Jonah Magnus_ , Rayner said, _nor do I. Such concepts do not exist for those who serve or embody the Powers … if indeed they exist for anyone as more than a romantic fiction._ The tendrils growing up from Jonah’s feet curved over his ass and belly, while another one slithered between his breasts to form a noose around his neck _(or a collar,_ Jonah thought helplessly). Jonah pathetically fought to squeeze his thighs shut.

Rayner prised Jonah’s legs apart with a sickening taunting slowness. _What you mean, however, is that you have acted as a series of holes to me … It always seemed to me that you enjoyed yourself then, though, yes?_

Jonah hissed at the icy coldness curling over his cunt through his breeches, where he was still leaking Elias. “You have always done me the courtesy of dressing up as a human before,” Jonah snarled, trying to gain some control by pretending to not be choking with fear.

Rayner chuckled. _Consider this cutting out the middle man_ , he said.

“And it was never against my will,” Jonah pointed out, unable to keep the wounded betrayal out of his voice.

 _My intentions are a bit more specific tonight, I’m afraid_ , Rayner said apologetically, an engorged tentacle seeping down the front of Jonah’s breeches and ripping them open.

“Those were of high quality,” Jonah sniffed.

 _So was this, if memory serves._ Jonah inhaled loudly as the tip of Rayner’s cold tentacle, sweating viscous fluids, parted his folds.

“Please, Maxwell,” Jonah pleaded.

 _But of course, Jonah_ , Rayner responded, _since you asked so nicely._ That single tentacle reared back and drove into Jonah’s gash with alarming alacrity. Jonah screamed, wriggling desperately as Rayner stuffed him, the shock of alien frigidness intermingling with Elias’s sweet leftover heat. He could feel a couple more tendrils spiral around the one inside him, forcing their way in, as a large liquid mass glued his arms down to his sides.

“Why are you doing this??” Jonah shouted.

Rayner circled another tendril around Jonah’s thigh, nearly cutting off the circulation, to prod at his other entrance. _Why are you making such a big fuss about it?_ , Rayner asked. There was anger in his ghostly voice now, and Jonah shuddered. An angry Maxwell Rayner was never a good thing. _Some avatar with a handsome face and pretty lies turns you into a walking incubator, and suddenly you’re a faithful housewife instead of a red-blooded man?_

 _“Oh, FUCK YOU,”_ Jonah said, thrashing against Rayner’s sliming hold. There was no way to get a grip; if anything he was only making himself a more pleasurable source of lubricated friction and body heat.

 _Do you kiss your sperm donor with that mouth?_ , Rayner further ridiculed. _I think I may have something to wash it out with._ Jonah tried to howl for help, but only a reedy whine escaped around the stygian mucous that pooled on his tongue and stretched itself out to gape his jaw.

Jonah was doing everything in his power not to cry or have a full-on anxiety attack, knowing that if he did that he would probably sob relentlessly and make it near impossible to breathe through his nose. _Don’t let me die like this,_ he prayed to a god that he knew was not listening.

The swirling corkscrew of tentacle-shaped black matter pumped in and out of Jonah’s pussy, before one liquid tendril broke off and flowed back out to add itself to the one poking at his asshole. The massive pair started to violently stretch out the rim, dripping grease. Jonah clenched his eyes shut to try and relieve some of the Darkness, perhaps to catch sight of the fine red veins on the backs of his eyelids, but there was infinitely nothing to be seen.

Jonah felt ice water fingering his hair, tangling and twisting it in a handle. _You feel better than I remember, Jonah_ , Rayner said, and even in his mind Jonah could Hear that Rayner was chasing some kind of eldritch climax. _No superfluous body to get in the way of us, just essence on skin._ Rayner dripped from Jonah’s mouth and down his chin, giving Jonah a chance to gag and spit. _You could still surrender to The Dark, you know_ , he offered. _I would let you live in the new world when we win, and all I’d ask of you in return is that you kneel at my side and provide some release on occasion._

Jonah continued to cough up drops of Rayner. “Please let me go home,” he whimpered.

 _Have it your way, Jonah_ , Rayner said. Jonah moaned as parts of Rayner still embedded within him began to pick up the pace, the ones in his cunt pistoning together. Jonah could feel sheets of fluid streaming down his legs. The tendrils in his ass were flexing and expanding inside him.

Jonah wailed as Rayner poured deeper into his vaginal canal and pounded up against something hard and unyielding. He could not be sure, but he believed Rayner was sowing threads of Darkness to needle their way past his cervix as though through osmosis. “Maxwell, please,” Jonah wept, “it’s too much, please … I need to see again …”

Rayner rutted against Jonah’s insides, situating himself amongst muscles and folds that weren’t intended to be reached. His completion broke inside Jonah, and Jonah felt Rayner’s pleasure ripple throughout his mind at the same moment that he felt eviscerating pain in his own body.

It is an awful thing, for a worshiper of Sight to be Blinded from the inside.

Jonah crumpled to the floor, instantly released from Rayner’s hold. The room exploded into light. The ballroom was bustling once more, panic-stricken people clambering to get to their feet and rubbing sleep sand from their eyes. Jonah dropped his head to the floor, lips parted in a silent scream.

He was so cold. It _hurt._

“Take it back,” Jonah gritted out. “Get it out of me …”

“I’m afraid that’s not really something I can do,” Rayner’s voice said. Jonah’s head shot up, but there was no Rayner to be found.

Jonah bawled hysterically, beyond words.

When he pulled himself together enough to cry for help, the only thing he could manage to do was scream Elias’s name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> xx


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @CAKESMARTS DREW [THE EYE COCK WORSHIP FROM THIS CHAPTER](https://twitter.com/Cakesmarts/status/1341587284978614272?s=20) HOLY SHITTT

Jonah continued to squeeze Elias’s name out of a throat ravaged by screams while Elias pressed his hands, cool and smooth, to either side of his face. Elias got down on both knees right as Jonathan practically slid home to Jonah’s opposite side.

Jonathan whipped off his brown tailcoat and flapped it around Jonah’s lower half. As if they had coordinated it, Elias fluidly pulled Jonathan’s coat tight and tied off the sleeves like a belt around Jonah’s waist. At last Jonah fell silent, resting the weight of his head in Elias’s hands when he replaced them.

“Who would have done such a thing??” Jonathan asked, as pandemonium continued to breed all around them.

 _Rayner,_ Elias thought in disgust. Jonah opened his mouth as if to answer, but Elias steamrolled over the moment. “Someone vile, I’m sure,” Elias said pithily. He pressed on before Jonathan could ask another question. “Jonathan,” he said, “you must assist the other guests. People are going to trample one another the way they’re trying to charge out of here.”

Jonathan sucked in his lips, dark eyes wet in the faint glow of the room that was now streaked with violently struggling shadows. “He is beyond the kind of help I can give, isn’t he?”

Elias helped Jonah to his feet, slinging Jonah’s arm across his shoulders, and gave Jonathan a sorry nod. “Unfortunately, yes, the help Jonah needs is hardly the sort of thing covered in medical school.” He took an exaggerated step to one side, dragging Jonah with him as a terrified man and woman couple ripped past them.

“Where will you take him?” Jonathan was clearly not leaving until the logistics for Jonah’s care were settled.

Elias grimaced, a problem presenting itself, at least as far as getting Jonathan to entrust Jonah to him so that he could address the pressing matter of Maxwell Rayner. “I’m afraid these events were unforeseeable,” he said truthfully. “Our carriage is not due back for hours.”

(It was highly unlikely that Elias and Jonah’s original hired carriage would come back at all, considering what Elias had done to the poor driver to secure his services without proper payment.)

Jonathan grasped Elias’s arm in a heated loyal gesture. “I shall fetch my best driver from his quarters,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the din. “The stagecoach will meet you out by the lake, and I will make it abundantly understood to him that he is to be at your disposal for as long as you need.” Jonathan loosened his hold, giving Elias one last brotherly clap on the back before rushing into the crowd.

“Now then,” Elias said ferociously, his fingers digging possessively into Jonah’s ribs, “now that Jonathan is distracted, you can steal a statement from one of these poor fools to fix your strength while I dispose of that geriatric inkblot.”

“What?” Jonah choked, his eyebrows leaping. “I can’t do that,” he said. He half-turned to grab the front of Elias’s bespoke jacket, tearing at large fistfuls of cloth. “I need written statements, I need my Institute— _I need you to stay with me. Please.”_

 _Of course,_ Elias thought, gritting his teeth. Jonah had been consuming statements for, what?—five years? Elias suspected there was a method to greatly speed up the process which would make a Beholder’s powers grow stronger, but he had not had the opportunity to test it out on Gertrude and the theory was certainly not helpful at the moment. “I’ll stay with you, Jonah,” Elias said, smoothing Jonah’s hair back off his forehead. “We’ll take Jonathan’s man to Edinburgh.”

By the time Jonah and Elias finally reached their Institute, Jonah was relying on Elias just not to cave in on the street. Elias fished a centuries-old key out of his breast pocket before reaching behind Jonah’s knees and swinging him in his arms to be carried up the stone steps and over the threshold. He unlocked the door and kicked it open with one hopelessly muddy dress shoe.

As Elias charged inside the tiny room that served as a proto-archives with Jonah’s head on his chest, he was greeted by the rising aroma of good ink and fine paper. He deposited Jonah in a chair beside a table and grabbed the closest real statement he could find off the nearest shelf, setting it down in front of Jonah. Jonah appeared to be nodding off, and Elias gave him a firm, frustrated shake. “Come now, Jonah,” he said, “you need to read, I can’t read it for you …”

Jonah strained forward at the sight of the sheet, focusing his eyes and moving his lips while he read to himself. Elias huffed out a laugh of grateful relief and moved behind Jonah to slide his arms down his front, burying his face in the copper curls and inhaling his scent. “That’s good, Jonah,” he said proudly, “just like that.”

Elias held on tight, latching on to the few mumbled phrases of the letter that he could hear in Jonah’s musical cadence. He reminded himself that Jonah’s wellbeing only mattered insofar as it directly impacted his own. He thought about that over and over, while his hands roved around Jonah’s body of their own accord and he blinked back what could have been tears.

Jonah straightened up stronger as he read. He pushed himself back against Elias’s clavicle and reached up with one arm to cradle Elias’s head near. He let out a long exhale upon finishing the last line of the letter.

“Such a good pet,” Elias praised above Jonah, with an irrepressible shiver. He folded his arms under Jonah’s chin. “You’re doing so well, let me find you another—”

Jonah clamped his hand around Elias’s forearm before he could let go. “Don’t go,” he whispered. “I need you …”

“You have me,” Elias said, shaking his head, “I wasn’t even about to leave the room …”

Jonah shook his own head broadly in response. “I _need_ you,” he said again, unabashed, “right now.” Jonah turned, tucking his legs beneath him on the chair and sitting back on his heels. His hands flew to twine behind Elias’s neck and he pulled himself up for a messy, tearful kiss.

Elias groaned, body responding before he could have a thought. He yanked Jonah to him roughly, tongue delving deep for the taste of him. Hardly breaking the kiss, Jonah untied Jonathan’s coat and let it slide to the floor, then shimmied out of what was left of his tattered and stained breeches.

“Wait,” Elias said, coming up for air. He put a hand over Jonah’s mouth between them. “Possibly I … should not be taking advantage of you like this.”

Jonah laughed bitterly, and Elias lowered his hand, stunned. “Our companionship is borne of you taking advantage of me,” he pointed out.

Elias winced, covering it up with a sneer. “Everything I have done,” he snapped, “was to make you stronger.” He eased his tone, sounding patient. “I don’t know if what you’re asking me to do right now might have the opposite effect after what you endured tonight.”

Jonah leaned in, tilting his head to kiss Elias chastely on the mouth. Then he suckled Elias’s lower lip between his teeth, barely nibbling before releasing it. Elias was pliant as could be, initiating none of it but chin lifted to provide plentiful access.

“I need it to be you,” Jonah muttered, sounding on the verge of crying outright again. “I need the last time to have been with you.” Jonah’s eyes misted with dew as they bore into Elias. “Please, Elias,” he pleaded, “I feel I shall go mad if that thing was the last to touch me.”

Elias understood, of course. His eyes burned back into Jonah’s as he stepped in front of the chair, nudging Jonah to standing with one knee so that he could sit and drag him down on top of him. Jonah’s legs spread wide, his thighs on either side of Elias’s hips, naked heat dripping over the front of Elias’s trousers. Elias unbuttoned Jonah’s waistcoat torturously slow and started to strip him completely until the man writhed naked on his fully clothed lap.

Jonah flushed as Elias bent to capture a peaked pink areola between his teeth. He rutted in circles around Elias’s aching bulge, a growing dark patch pooling on the lighter fabric. Elias sucked dreamily, caressing Jonah’s other breast before giving it a quick slap. Jonah jumped with a shudder, and Elias continued to smack it with the backs of his fingers, tugging the other between his lips while inside his mouth his tongue swirled and lapped at the groove of the nipple relentlessly.

Elias backed off Jonah’s nipple, which still gleamed with spit as he leaned to undo his trousers. Jonah wriggled expectantly above him. Elias tugged out his straining cock, palming it while he gazed into Jonah’s eyes with an unreadable expression. “You need me?” he asked, gentle but in control.

Jonah thrust forward so that his slicked clit rubbed up against the base of Elias’s shaft, and he nodded hungrily. Jonah stared down at Elias’s prick, licking his lips when he saw the pearl beading at the tip.

“Take everything you need, Jonah,” Elias said, placing his arms on the chair’s armrests.

“I need you to make love to me,” Jonah said.

That caught Elias genuinely off-guard. “That’s …,” he started—“it’s not that I’m opposed to giving you anything you want, Jonah,” he said. “It’s just that I don’t think that’s something I can do.”

Jonah lifted himself on his knees, holding his pubic hair flat against his mound to watch himself sheathe Elias’s cock inch by inch. Elias hissed with agonizing pleasure. “All you have to do is be with me,” Jonah asserted, vibrating as he sank down fully to Elias’s hilt.

Elias dropped his fingers to curve around each of Jonah’s hips. “Of course I’m with you,” he said.

“No,” said Jonah, starting to work his hips in lazy waves over Elias. “Be with me right _now._ Be with _me_ right now. Don’t think about your endgame, or how useful I am.” Jonah fell forward to lick inside the seam of Elias’s mouth. Elias parted easily for him, almost closing his eyes from the kiss. “Just be with me. Please.”

Elias didn’t understand; when had he ever been so needy? Furthermore, Jonah was wounded, fresh off trauma, and instead of hiding he was exposing himself to Elias, at a time when Elias could have destroyed him. Elias felt a surge of protective warmth at that, and his eyes blew open wide at the sudden realization that this was _Jonah’s_ quiet power: the ability to disarm and unmake a man with an alarming show of tractability.

Elias moaned into Jonah’s mouth, thinking about how powerful they would be together.

Jonah nipped viciously at Elias’s lip. “Stay with me,” he said.

Elias held onto Jonah’s hips tighter, thumbs flowering bruises where he handled him. Jonah responded by rocking and grinding against Elias’s body. He was soaked. Elias kissed Jonah’s forehead tenderly. “I’m here, Jonah,” he promised.

He didn’t know if that was true, but when he saw the way Jonah’s eyes lit up, he decided that if he was lying, that it was a sweet and justified lie.

He _was_ trying.

Jonah was speeding up, pounding his pussy on Elias, his breathing becoming more shallow. He drove himself down on Elias’s prick, and Elias was surprised by how sugar-soft Jonah’s sounds were this time when he felt Jonah’s muscles flex around him. Jonah laid still for a moment, cuddling close and heart racing where Elias could feel it.

“Fuck me, Elias?” His voice raised at the end, as if there were any question whether Elias would oblige.

Jonah let out a shriek when Elias immediately stood and hiked Jonah onto the table without pulling out of him for a second. Elias kicked off his shoes and trousers, then flattened his palms on either side of Jonah’s neck and set his own punishing pace to knock the bottom out of Jonah’s precious accommodating cunt. Elias set his head by Jonah’s, kissing his cheek and rumbling in his ear. “You are _not_ The Dark’s,” he grunted. “I will not leave a single drop of him in you, because you belong to _me,_ and The Eye … Your very flesh belongs to Beholding in the most primal way possible.”

Jonah twisted his fingers in Elias’s hair. The table legs beneath them squealed across the floor from the storm of Elias’s movements. “Will it be human?” Jonah panted.

“Absolutely not,” Elias swore.

**“Will you love me?”**

Elias cried out, the Compulsion entirely too unexpected. It was not nearly strong enough to force him under regular circumstances, but teetering on the edge of orgasm was another story. “For every day that I remain here, I am more afraid that I might,” he gasped, hips bucking more erratically. “I am afraid that I—” Elias spilled inside Jonah with a hoarse shout.

Jonah arched up, moaning long, and wound his arms around Elias’s back to leave no space between them. “What did you do??” he heaved sharply. He raised his hands to Elias’s face, fingers trailing beneath a sparkling trio of green eyes blinking at him from each cheekbone.

“Did it hurt?” Elias managed between breaths. The nonhuman eyes that had opened closed but did not disappear. Perspiration highlighted the silver strands at Elias’s temples.

Jonah shook his head, mouth slackened dumbly. “I’m not cold anymore,” he mumbled. “Oh, Elias,” he breathed against his lips, “it feels wonderful.”

Elias pulled out carefully, as if he didn’t want to scare Jonah by moving too fast, and sat back down on the chair behind him. Jonah propped himself up on his elbows and looked, at the rows of eyes splitting Elias’s cock so that there were barely even slits of skin showing between each set of eyelids. A few symmetrical strays fanned out to his lower belly and inner thighs.

“You Looked inside me,” Jonah said in astonishment.

“I Looked through The Dark,” Elias said calmly.

Jonah slid off the table to his knees between Elias’s open legs for a closer look. Elias smiled benevolently. He held his stiff prick out proudly _(could he even get soft when it’s like this?,_ Jonah wondered), tracing the lower lashes of a closed eye with his thumb. Jonah raised his face to look up at Elias. “You are beautiful,” he said.

Elias ran his fingers through Jonah’s hair, scratching lightly at the scalp. He hummed curiously, holding Jonah’s head in place and just placing the tip of his cock in front of Jonah’s mouth, close enough that Jonah had to have felt the body heat. As he suspected, he did not have to do anything else: Jonah’s eyes half-hooded and his lips parted in yearning.

Elias would not make him yearn.

Elias let those eyes shut loosely. He left his hand on the back of Jonah’s head but freed his hold, and Jonah sank Elias’s cock down his throat with what might have been the most pleasured sound Elias had heard him make yet. Jonah bobbed on Elias with his cheeks hollowed, cleaning his cock of his own juices. Elias purred, petting Jonah’s hair. Jonah peered up at Elias adoringly.

He was perfect.

Jonah popped off Elias’s prick but stayed where he sat. “Can you open them again?” he asked, almost too low for Elias to hear.

One by one the eyes of Elias’s body sprang back open to Watch Jonah again. “Careful, pet,” Elias crooned, as Jonah administered affection to each eye with the daintiest of licks. Elias swallowed hard.

Jonah was enamored with Beholding. Elias might have been enamored with Jonah.

“You know,” Elias murmured, stroking Jonah’s cheek with his knuckles while Jonah continued to worship his Sighted cock with his mouth, “I always envied those who could submit to a lover. I thought how amazing that must feel, to have someone to trust enough to present oneself as a gift.” Elias touched Jonah’s shoulder, and Jonah let out a whine as Elias stood to pull on his clothes. He reached down and chucked Jonah under the chin. “You are a gift, Jonah,” he said sincerely. “I can only hope that I can make you feel like one.”

Jonah rubbed his face against Elias’s knee in reply.

“Come on,” Elias urged Jonah up, “have a seat. You should read one more statement.”

Jonah climbed up on his chair, granting Elias a blissful fucked-out smile. “There are better ones in my office,” he said. “The ones in my desk are fresh.”

Elias kissed the crown of Jonah’s head. “Then you stay right there,” he said. “I’ll get one for you.”

Elias headed toward the door, but Jonah stopped him before he exited. “Elias?” he started. He paused. “I would be yours and yours alone,” he said shyly, “forsaking my other lovers.”

“I know,” Elias said fondly, with a nod, “and I would keep you all to myself, not even giving the others a chance to win you back.”

Jonah curled up comfortably on the chair.

Elias shut the door behind him, then passed through the hallway which led to Jonah’s office. He walked to the desk, preparing to rummage through drawers, when something on top of it caught his eye. He unfolded the statement, then frowned.

Elias stuffed the paper deep in his pocket. “It is a tragedy,” Elias grieved, only to himself, “that even in this timeline, that you should have such self-defeating timing, my dear Barnabas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> xx


End file.
